We had a power outage during the day yesterday. When the power came back on, the Mac Mini booted up and Chrome updated to 115. I was having the same issues as others have shared.
I was able to delete Chrome completely, downgrade to 114, and then turned off automatic updates in Chrome. With that I was back in business.
Hmm, the frame rate I'm seeing on a test recording right now accroding to mpv is in the neighborhood of ~37fps. Such a variable and non-standard frame rate would explain the stuttering. Could that be the result of my CPU encoding not being as beefy as I thought?
I would assume a Ryzen 7 3700X would be plenty to encode a stream, all in CPU. I'm currently recording the Brewers/Rockies game from Bally Sports, and the frame rate that Channels reports is 30 fps. It would be nice if CC4C could support 60 fps. Obviously, it depends on the source stream, as well. My sports playback is pretty smooth, with a slight judder every so often. I've been meaning to try the vsync disable command, to see if that helps, but have not had the time.
I checked a couple of channels directly from Fubo, in Chrome, and the frame rate is 59 fps. I wonder if there is a way to force CC4C to capture at 60 fps?
I'm testing with Bally Sports too, but Ranger/A's. Spectrum is going 720p60 on al lHD, at least here in DFW after the high split, so that's what I was expecting. That doesn't mean the network streams are 60fps, though. Spectrum took away my cablecard so I need a good solution for Bally Sports before hockey season starts. That is, of course, if BS even still has NHL rights by then.
Are there any step by step instructions for how to edit the code and compile your own exe file for Windows? This thread is getting really long and hard to find relevant info if it's posted earlier. I found someone posting earlier asking for help on simple things for some of you like how to download the files from GitHub. I can use those instructions too if the step by step instructions can start with something like that, would be great! Thanks
@augie0041 Follow the link in the first post of this thread, to the github for CC4C. Then down on that page, there is a "development" section. You can follow those steps to be able to run a modified main.js file. The main.js file can be edited in a simple text editor. I have not built my modified file back into an exe, so I'm unable to give you steps to do that. I'm assuming a Google search will yield a "how to" build a js file into an exe.
No need to build the exe, clone the repo and run node main.js
Not to mention that it won't build correctly on Windows anyway. It builds the mac version and that's it because it errors out. Just run 'node main.js', that's all the exe does.
I reported up thread that I don't get anything more than 30 FPS, so the min framerate variable is being ignored or the Chrome encoder can't handle it.
I'm trying to get this to work with NFL+ for NFL Network. I'm a bit confused what to put in to get the guide data, might this be it?: #EXTINF:-1 channel-id="NFL",NFL Network
Anyone discovered why Apple TV or TS4K won’t pause or rewind Chrome Capture Channels? It would seem it should behave as other streams such as Pluto, Frndly…etc. I have tried this on both NBC and Spectrum. Streams seem reliable. Thanks.
Follow the directions from above [Step 3, Part 3, later paragraph]:
Then do Step 4 to map stations.
Thank you
Has anyone figured out a solution to not being able to fast forward / rewind / seek? I've gotten everything working otherwise on my M2 Mac Mini. Thanks!
Sorry, can't say I've ever seen that issue on a Channels client.
@sheepy You are using chrome capture for channels and aren't seeing this issue? I'm only seeing this happen with channels coming through Chrome Capture for Channels. TV Everywhere channels fast forward / rewind / seek just fine.
Edit: I downgraded Chrome to version 114.0.5735.90 and am no longer having any issues! Nearly 800 messages in this thread. It was a slog to find this.
@greanleaf, glad to hear you found a solution. I bumped into the Chrome 115 issue a while back. But, in my case it stopped working entirely. Interesting that you were still able to capture, but lost the ability to seek within the file.
Interesting find today. Watching the NFL Network over my Fubo TVE source, and the stream was pretty jerky. Stats in Channels, showed it coming in at 720p, and only about 1800 kbps. I disabled the TVE channel source, and added NFL Network to my CC4C source. Perfectly smooth playback, coming in at 1080 30 fps and 16 Mbps. Much better experience. Only problem is the station logo is showing as "Court TV" in the guide. Will have to see how to fix that. Guide data is correct, but the logo is wrong.
Apologies, I've been trying to keep the the Simplified Installation Instructions above up to date with all the common solutions to issues, but had not updated it in a while with that note. It is in there now, along with @bnhf's Docker Compose method for interacting with VNC (I need to do a fully documented build run with that one, still).
I'm going to recommend to everyone slogging through here to look at that post first and foremost.
I have that exact issue, can't playback any recording with seek options. So they look great but are unwatchable because you can rarely skip around. I've also seen it take forever to start playing, sometimes only play sound with black screen etc. This is on Windows 11, Ryzen 7 5800H graphics, ATV 4K client.
When I remux a video with ffmpeg copy command it reports a bunch of issues so something is going wrong with the Chrome encoder.
EDIT: NVM, it's the 115 issue again. Had to downgrade to Chrome 114, disable the two Google Update services and the two tasks in task scheduler (maybe redundant, not taking chances).
